Advertising is the process of facilitating the industrial trade of given products or services by convincing the potential customer to purchase it. The objective of this study was to evaluate the viewer's response while watching TV commercials using electroencephalographic (EEG) technique and how brain rhythms vary with different genres of commercials. Eight volunteers were shown an English movie with commercials embedded within it at regular intervals. Using extracted features from the EEG signals, it was found that advertisements containing only speech have less attraction with viewers as compared to advertisements having animations, music and humour. Psychophysiological test was also corroborated that the animations along with humour, music and narrative speech are more effective in attracting the viewers towards advertisements. The proposed methodology helps industries to drive innovations and inspires ideas from lateral thinking to promote the new products and services towards the customer. Copyright © 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.